Oh no Toto!

Okay, my boss gets back from a week's vacation and I'm right back up to my butt in work. So much for my weekend... but it's good pay, so I'll shut up now.

Had to take a moment and chronicle this one though.

Tornados hit the area this afternoon. Bri was out at a friend's house; Chris had a friend visiting here; I had just gotten Kiki to sleep for a nap in her crib upstairs (I've been working upstairs). Well, Chris's friend's grandma shows up to let me know there's a touchdown in a town nearby and to gather up her grandson. I gather up the baby, my computer, and Chris, and head on downstairs -- we have no basement, but I know enough to be on the ground level.

Before I could panic about whether or not or HOW I'd go and pick up Bri, her friend's mom dropped her off on our doorstep. Evidently it is midwestern protocol to gather up the chicks when a tornado is imminent. I figured you just left 'em where they were and hoped for the best. Who knew?

Anyway, Chris does not handle storms well. Thunderstorm are bad enough, but if the rain is loud enough to audible, he even starts getting anxious. Add on to this a sudden hailstorm and an imminent tornado, and the boy was shaking.

Bri suggested I get their mom on the phone to talk to him. He curled up under a blanket on the floor, talking on the phone with her, and Bri suggested we build a fort. So we gathered some chairs, blankets, and pillows and built ourselves a pretty nice little fort. The four of us gathered in, and Kiki started trying to climb the bundle of blanket that was Chris, which caused him to peek out of his blanket, note that he was still covered. So he sat up, and the four of us spent a couple of hours sitting cross-legged in a circle, eating popisciles and Doritos and talking about Pokemon.

Well, Kiki didn't add much to the conversation other than a growl here or there when prompted, but she swiped the popsicle out of her brother's hand and kept trying to steal his toys. Now either she adores the heck out of Chris -- she sits and stares at him, then cocks her head and smiles -- or she's already decided she's going to bully him as much as Bri does. In any case, her attention was 100% on Chris the entire afternoon, no matter what he was doing.

So for those of you who worried, no worries. We are safe, we are sound, we are damage-free. We even had some fun!

And now... I head back to work.